Complex dynamical systems such as air traffic management and control are facing increasing demands from private, commercial, and military operations. Vehicles such as airplanes, ships, and other mobile platforms are able to meet stringent safety, efficiency, and performance requirements through the integration of complex on-board computer systems. Such complex on-board computer systems work not only with other on-board equipment but must communicate with complex systems of other mobile or fixed platforms' computer systems. While such complex systems can be designed to interact with each other in a variety of ways, they must in the end be subject to supervisory review and control by a human operator.
Complex systems utilized for air or ground traffic management often rely on human-machine interfaces to present information to pilots and operators. One important human-machine interface in traffic management is a display system that depicts information not only about the own-ship but also about the traffic environment including information on nearby traffic aircraft. The amount of information and the limited display space often creates a contention that poses a serious design challenge of providing meaningful context to human operators.
Moreover, as a primary human-machine interface, display systems generally have to be shared between multiple applications, often displaying the status information of multiple systems. For example, a map, weather, or terrain display may be used in conjunction with traffic display. Consequently, the traffic information used for a traffic application may not fit well with a map information used for a navigation application. Thus, human operators such as pilots have the difficult task of integrating the displayed information of multiple systems in a meaningful and efficient way to gain situational awareness of the traffic scenario.